Thursday, May 10, 2012

DILLINGER PAROLED

Conned!

Michigan CityResponding to a parole petition signed by 188 good citizens of Mooresville, Indiana, that include the county sheriff, the court clerk, auditor, treasurer, recorder, assessor, former victim, grocer Frank Morgan, and the sentencing judge Joe Williams, Clemency Commissioners Delos Dean and Tom Arbuckle vote to approve (for unknown reasons the third member of the commission abstains) the release of Indiana State Penitentiary prisoner #13225, who is then serving a 10-20 year sentence for a botched 1924 armed robbery.
Michigan City InmateDue diligence done, on May 10, 1933, Democrat Governor Paul V. McNutt signs the order ... and unwittingly turns loose an embittered convict that has vowed to make the state and society pay for a list of perceived wrongs that include receiving the maximum sentence for his crime though told he wouldn't if he plead guilty, seeing his older partner in crime, John Singleton, the man who talked him into committing the robbery receive a lighter sentence, having years added on to his sentence for a series of minor infractions, being stuck behind bars when his wife, Beryl Ethel Hovious is granted a divorce by the same judge that sentenced him to prison, and though his parole papers are signed, being kept incarcerated in a red tape snafu until May 20, just long enough so that he arrives home thirty minutes too late to say goodbye to his dying step-mother. Make up for lost time and get even his sole focus, unbeknownst to authorities, the convict they have released has spent his almost nine years in jail studying how to become a bank robber, taught by a set of hardened criminals that includes "Handsome" Harry Pierpont, Charley Mackley, Russell Clark, John "Red" Hamilton, and Homer Van Meter ... outlaws he will soon join in unleashing a fourteen month crime wave on the Midwest that will include two escapes from jail (one using a whittled wooden pistol), a ten man prison break, the robbery of a dozen banks of roughly $500,000 in assets (worth over $7 million by the standard money valuations of today), weapon stealing raids on three police stations (along with bullet proof vests), several shootouts with law enforcement officers, and over twenty violent deaths ... future Public Enemy #1 (the first to be designated so by the FBI), John Herbert Dillinger is free to do as he says upon being put behind bars, "I'll be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out."
Dillinger